After having an excellent group of students in my class on Friday I’m off on my own, well not really. My best buddy, Barb, is traveling with me on this adventure. On Saturday we stopped in St. Thomas. We were there from 8am to 5pm. We decided to sleep in, which I don’t do very often. My next stop, which is the same 6 days a week, is to head to the gym or on the cruise ship to the Promenade deck for a 3 mile walk. Then Barb and I went to the Lido deck for some breakfast. One of the servers/hostesses in the Lido deck was Revino. He is from Indonesia. He told us how he is working to improve his English. Well, Barb being an x English teacher could not resist. Everyday we saw him we had a new word for him along with the definition. Each day as we went back Revino would repeat the previous days words and be ready for 2 new words, one from each of us. Revino was a bright spot in our day. Not that there were not a lot of bright spots in the day.
We hired a local driver, Joe, who was an excellent tour guide. In 2 hours he took us all over the island and stopped once in a while so we could take some photos. We were able to squeeze in a little shopping also! There is actually a lot of good shopping in St. Thomas.
OK, I know some of you think I am crazy but I love the Iguana’s. Love them. I find them to be so interesting. Their faces, skin texture, spines on their backs…..
Our next days adventure took us to Dominica. I’ll have to admit this was not my favorite island mainly because there was not as much to do. But we did some touring of the island. And I really liked the building in the center of my photo. It was right in the center of the town.
Just because it may not have been my favorite island does not mean I did not like it or that I did not appreciate being able to take off my sandals and walk on the beach while my husband was at home in this. They had 50″ of snow while I was gone. I do know when to plan a trip!
Our next stop…Barbados. We went on a shore excursion organized by the cruise line. The tour took us from coast to coast and it is a beautiful island. One of our stops was at a small old church on the hill. I liked the trees in the cemetery behind the church.
Our next adventure took us to St. Lucia. One of the only islands where I found black sand. And let me tell you….keep your shoes on if the sun is shinning. That sand gets very hot!!!! We again hired a local driver, Edward, who I think knew everyone on the island. We asked him as part of our tour to please take us to a place we heard about called “Caribelle Batik”. It was worth the trip in more ways than one. They had lots of fun things to purchase from panels, to bathing suit wraps to glasses cases, etc. And to top it off they had demonstrations. I really enjoyed watching the wax and painting process. Makes you appreciate the batik fabric even more.
Interesting boulder formations along the shore.
Our final stop was St. Maarten. Joe and I spent a week on this island for our 25 wedding anniversary several years ago. We still say not only did we like the island but it is by far the best food we have ever had. The island is half French and half Dutch and they get along nicely. There is clearly a French influence in their cooking. We kept thinking that surely we would come across one bad meal but we never did. One place we had lunch at least two or three times was up in the mountains and it was built like a big tree house. They had the best mango drinks I have ever had.
On this trip we did another excursion organized by the cruise lines. We stopped at several places along the way. There is a lot of great shopping in St. Maarten, both locally made and duty free type shopping.
There were three other cruise ships at port when we were there.
One other thing we did was to visit the butterfly farm but since this is getting pretty long I’m going to save those photos for my next installment.
During our final two days of cruising our way back to Ft. Lauderdale we had time for two more quilting classes. And then on Friday after class we had show and tell for everyone to share what they had worked on in classes. I was so proud of my students. They really were the best! It is unusual for my students to have much to show at show and tell because hand work requires some time. But, since there were 6 days between the first class and show and tell they had time to sew and sew they did.
Oh, the blocks behind the students were made by people from our quilting group prior to the cruise and one lucky person won all of the blocks.
This is a close-up of my friend Barb’s block. I loved it.
Next installment…butterfly farm.